Main problems facing the project
- No documentation for the complex IT product.
- High dependence on individual team members.
- Too much time spent by new specialists getting involved in the project.
- Financial and reputational risks arising from inadequate control of product knowledge, so the new specialists face the possible consequences of changes they implement.
Under such conditions, it was impossible for the new team to quickly immerse itself into the project.
“This is a standard situation: when providing consulting services, I often come across big IT projects that don’t have the issue of knowledge transfer resolved. As practice shows, even engineers with a lot of experience can spend months trying to understand the specifics of the product and processes. On the one hand, developers get a lot of experience in this case, but if the customer’s goal is to quickly immerse specialists, create interchangeable teams, and take less risks, then it is impossible to do so without a thorough study of the knowledge transfer process.
Unfortunately, founders often do not allocate resources to control this area and are not morally ready to invest in it. But this should be done as early as possible: a unified system of immersion for engineers plays an important role in the security and stability of the IT business.“
Dzmitry Harachka